Pete Tong feels the love in Hull

It doesn't matter where you are, Hull or Hong Kong, Rio or Reykjavik, once you're behind those decks the only thing that matters is the music, says DJing legend Pete Tong.

Which is a good job, because within the next few weeks the superstar DJ will be globetrotting from East Yorkshire to Minsk, in Belarus, via Wales, Northern Ireland and Manchester, attempting to take the audience higher on a diet of house music and electronica at each stop on his packed itinerary.

Somewhere, in between the gigs and first class airport lounges, he'll be finding time to host his long-running Radio One show, which until recently was known as The Essential Selection, and remix some of the hottest club tunes for the latest in a long line of chart-topping dance albums.

He's a busy boy, is Pete Tong.

But when he returns to Hull's Deja Vu tomorrow, at The Asylum, the only thing on his mind will be playing the music that has been his life for the past three decades.

"No, it doesn't really matter where you are," says the 49-year-old DJ. "You're still trying to create the perfect sequence, the perfect atmosphere, the perfect peak.

"Sometimes it works in Rio, sometimes you get the best vibe in Hull. That's what makes DJing fascinating and, at times, frustrating.

"You can't predict when it's all going to go right or wrong. I've always compared DJing to surfing. The last time I played in Hull it was full on and I was taken aback by the 'luuuurve'."

Being one of the biggest beasts in the clubland jungle is a long way from Tong's roots, where he started out running a mobile disco, touring his home county of Kent in a transit van and organising seaside "soul weekenders".

But brief stints as a music journalist for Blues And Soul Magazine and then as a record company A&R man soon gave way to Tong's first love of being the man in the spotlight.

It was the emerging house music scene coming out of Chicago in the mid-80s that provided the spark to transform Tong just another would-be DJ into a household name.

"I was always immersed in music," says Pete. "It was the most important thing in my life.

"DJing had a fair share of ego involved as well, I guess. I wanted to run parties I wanted to be orchestrating behind the scenes.

"DJs are usually frustrated rock stars. We want the attention but we can't dance.

"I was always curious, or more likely distracted, by the next big thing and, after rap and electro, it was the early house records in the mid-eighties that opened up a whole new world. This was my calling."

Pete, whose major memories of headlining Deja Vu are a "slippery stage, gurning and a very happy noise", says he's hoping to recapture some of that sprit when he returns to Asylum, tomorrow.

Part of the challenge, he says, is to constantly evolve with the music, always setting the trends rather than following them and reinventing yourself for each new batch of clubbers.

"I think the clubbing scene's gone through another huge generation change," he says.

"It really is a fresh landscape compared to five years ago. In someways for me it's like starting again. Getting your sound and vibe across to a whole new audience."

Tickets for the show are available from Bolo and Bloc, in Savile Street, Hull; Hull University Union; Dias, in Hessle; and Riley's, in North Bar Within, Beverley.

Pete Tong at Deja Vu, at Asylum, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull, tomorrow from 10pm to 3am. Entry costs £15. For more information call (01482) 466 264.